The initial emergence of SARS-CoV-2 created uncertainty for humanity, driving people to seek assistance on social media. This study aims to understand the role of social media in coping with crises and to offer guidance for future uncertainties by examining the experiences of Wuhan during the early stages of the pandemic.

Using quantitative content analysis, this study investigated 2207 Weibo posts tagged with “COVID-19 Mutual Aid” from individuals located in Wuhan during the early lockdown period from January 23, 2020, to March 23, 2020.

At the start of pandemic, messages seeking tangible support were most common. A hurdle regression model showed that deeper self-disclosure led to more retransmission of help-seeking messages. The Chi-Square and Mann-Whitney U tests revealed that health professionals and laypeople had different self-disclosure strategies.

This study provides insight into the online social support exchange during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in Wuhan, highlighting the importance of self-disclosure on message retransmission, and the differences in self-disclosure strategies between health professionals and laypeople in online help-seeking.